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Mihai Cimpoi
THE TOWER OF HOMESICKNESS
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In
the medieval tales for children the fairies reward the virtues and
punish the bad deeds. They, the fairies, know very well the limits
between good and bad, beauty and ugly, putting in high categories
honesty, obedience, disgrace and disobedience. Those who are decorous
are given the power, as Perrault remarks in the foreword of his book
„Basmele" (The Tales), to get a pearl for a word and those who are
cheeky — a frog and an urchin. While the Greeks and Latins tried to
full their tales with a clear morality and the Middle Ages, who
preferred the fairytales hiding the morality in the narratives charm,
the writer of our century announce their inclina-tion for story-tale,
in which the miraculous and the real concrete claim themselves the
same rights. The fairies disappeared, the deeds took the place for
reward and punish, without any special didactic accents and the
transportation of the whole action in the sphere of miraculous. The
accent in the poetics of cultured tale is moved to the generality of
concrete. The fantastic helps him there where the concrete is not
able, that is in the minutes in which he is conquered by the dream.
Ciubotei is not more ingenious as Guguță, but he dreams and tries to
do more. The first is a hero of a modern tale, the second a hero of a
story who explores the convențional.
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Spiridon Vangheli made his debut with ballads, a style where the
concrete has epic and legendary sizes: to get rid of Turkish invasion
the wine grower carried the cradle in the vineyard for growing up a
new generation of outlaws; in the work „Șalul verde" (The Green Shawl)
the convențional element seems more daring, but even here mother
reaches the Court of the sun that is also on the earth; but in the
work „Balada plugarului" (The Ploughman's Ballad) we have the most
earthen image of the ballad cycle: „And Ion left and that was all / He
hâd no time to be Newton / Neither Columbus and nor Copernicus / He
held the plough by the horns / To feed the people of the world".
„Generally speaking, Vangheli — George Meniuc was mentioning in his
wishes for the departure — is thinking a lot over cornmon, simple
things to be found around the mân of long ago".
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From
the debut to the „Pantalonia — țara năstrușnicilor", where the
adventure reappears with all its devilish beginning of the childhood,
Spiridon Vangheli didn't affect the ordinary and the simplicity — two
of the biggest categories of the childhood. Ciubotei, Guguță and
Titirică don't need miraculous world — royal palaces, castles, islands
of treasures — but just a thread of starlight, a young beauty Moon and
a tower of homesickness for joining the tines and the adults who are
away from home. Ir1 s enough for them a modest Răut's
valley with water till knees, with lonely trees which decided to grow
up, with cherries from which at a pinch they can filch as Nică a lui
Ștefan a Petrei.
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Concrete elements are saturated with poems. They have their story,
their legen-dary life, so that the first snowfall on the grain's field
reveals deep historical roods: Voievode Ștefan is sitting in a house
surrounded by his soldiers Mircea cel Bătrân, Mihai Viteazul,
Făt-Frumos and Eminescu, Creangă, Barbu Lăutaru. We can say that
Spiridon Vangheli's ballads work up the concrete's vitality.
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The
buds break out, the flowers undo, the green pigments, the sweet twigs
grow, the day combines brotherly with the night, preparing the morning
freshness of their solar front: .. .Rise, sun, rise/ A cherry-tree/
Has blossomed/ Last night!/
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It is
necessary to speak here about a relationship between children's
folklore and generally methods of popular ballads?
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It is
an obsession of starlight, of white in general, in the whole Spiridon
Vangheli's creation. The snowfalls căușe long moments of poetical
dreaming, they bring the magic sleep of childhood: „Towards evening it
began to snow. Large snow flakes that Guguță hâd never seen before
were falling on the ground.
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When
it became dark, the ground became lily-white. Guguță hâd waited by the
window still much time for the snowfall to stop — till his mother
found him fast asleep late at night, with a button in his hand".
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In
the work „Steaua lui Ciubotei" the whole universe gets start from
snow. AII the personages of tale are made of snow: aunt Dalba, uncie
Dalbu and Ucu. It is a deep, poetical meaning in this alliance between
children and the snow creatures, which the spring transforms in the
creatures of beauty. Sun's sister appears where the aunt Dalba stayed:
„father hâd put some barrels in the shed: the one who came to see it
hâd to bathe first — well, he was going to see the Sun's sister! Those
with the carts would stop by the well and threw one or two buckets of
water on horses. The others washed their cars very well and only one
had left his bla-a-ack and greasy tractor God knows where on the road
and he came on foot. It was he who was given the largest barrel. The
women bathed at home and were coming in a hurry: first, to see the
Sun's sister and then to bring clean linen, because their husbands
couldn't get out of the shed".
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Matures pass in Spiridon Vangheli's prose through the childhood's
purgatory Guguță's and Ciuboțel's cleverness bring them in the sphere
of the first purity. The moral meaning of the episode with Sun's
sister is that the beauty gets start from the dream's purity. Ghiocica
is the first embodiment of such a law.
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The
little heroes don't find any more ingenious solutions or overturn the
situa-tions in their favour: they have their point of view about the
world, they ask for an autonomous statute, full of a special charm.
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Thus,
the rule of the game is required to the matures demeanour.
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It is
a strong result of democratisation: the little ones are gifted with
wisdom, but the adults are engaged in the game. Any act of adjusts
from the adults part is repaired by children themselves, more than
that the adults are obliged to make themselves childish in the whole
sense of the word. The adults have to learn from the children — have
wrote the prosewriter in „Tânărul leninist", this being the leit motif
of the whole written: Guguță not only makes a desk, hides children
under his fur cap, makes a swing from wells sweep or travels with the
water-butt on the imaginary waters, but he teaches his mother to drive
the bicycle, he takes the revenge on the hairdresser, he pulls out all
the village at the sledging; Ciubotei doesn't play only from joy with
snowmen, he proves to people the sense of spiritual purity.
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Why
do Guguță's, Ciuboțel's and Trică's feats thrill us? These feats can
be trans-formed in amusing detectives and not else, if they would be
only epic. The person-alities light of the child are projected in
them. They are a continuation of the dream and a sublimation in the
concrete context of the life. The games logically combines at the epic
in epic and aesthetic. The aunt Dalba as Sky"s sister transforms, of
course in Sun's sister.
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The
Tower of homesickness is unreasonable and frighten people to death,
but is a point of souls communication, of distance's reduction. The
nonsense gets an important meaning. This is the tale's secret, which
is hidden in Spiridon Vangheli's written.
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"It
was snowing.
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When
he came back from the farm, the longing hop-hop-hop followed his
tracks back home, and as Ciubotei entered the courtyard, he started
missing his mother again.
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—Tuca, uca, o? Why are you so sad? — asked aunt Dalba.
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—Because I am so small and I can't see my mother from home... I wish I
were as
tall as that tree. I would walk around and mother would see me from
the farm.
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There
is not any psychological distance between the child's wish and its
realisa-tion, it is a convențional one which can be immediately
destroyed by a game. With the help of the snow-boys, the lilliputian,
and the dog Faraon the tower is being built in one night from rocks
and cob: „the tower was so high that at moonlight you couldn't see its
top from below".
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The
game is self-sufficient. It means a dream with all its chances. All
the elements: children, animals, plants, stars fraternise and make up
a whole universe. The dog called Faraon, the stork — Haralamb,
Ghiocica, the cloud named Gavril, the butterfly — Chirii, the bee
called Măriuța, the whelp of snail — Culăieș, Steluța, the snowboy
named Ucu, the swallow — Pachița and the cat — Tecla are ethnical
inventory of childhood's universe, as it can be seen from the work
„Steaua lui Ciubotei" (Ciuboțel's Star). Ciuboțel's adventures are
collective, his „helping assistants" are always by him. The child
cannot be insular, his ego being strong pointed out and in the same
time (he) socialised in his duds. This is one more truth that proves
us Spiridon Vangheli's prose.
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The
child's world is intricate, the big constructive upsurges coexisting
with the devilish starts of adventure. Guguță is the son of a good
faith, Ciubotei is the son of the dream and the melancholy, Titirică
is the creation of proclivity to prank: he is a little demon of evil,
a Mephisto of childhood. Jules Renard, contradicting Hugo's notion
about the angel child, pleads for renewal of children's literature in
which we must expel the mawkishness: „Not the child who tells funny
stories, but the child who thrust his nails in all the things which
seem to be soft. The parent must be always busy taking all these
things from him".
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The
adults influence the sweet child and the oldish child.
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Titirică is a prankboy who fascinates us. His deeds are full of
childhood's charm. These deeds retum to him like a boomerang. Spiridon
Vangheli agrees the moralis-ing too. He just tries to show us the
comic part and the real meaning of the deed, of child's point of view.
The morality is replaced by cunning look in the eyes and fairies
punish the prank.
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Titirică is an anti — Guguță and an anti — Ciubotei, he is not a tale
hero any more. His deeds are absolute real, his humour is a sweet wave
of sentimentalism. He is the single sign of childhood, the
truthfulness being the most important thing.
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The
short story „Cum și-a făcut Titirică statue" (How Titirică Made His
Statue) is full of a pleasant humour. While Ciubotei builds a tower of
melancholy, the new hero of Spiridon Vangheli fancies and builds a
statue, proves that he is a more accented „vanity" than the other two:
„Not the child who tells witty jokes, but the one who thrusts his
nails in all the things which seem to be fragile in his opinion. The
parent must be always concerned in withdrawing them out".
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While
the best solution is found, appears the penalty, his frisk ends with a
sad failure: „And as he was standing on the tree-stump — hooshtyuliuc!
— pours on his foot a bucket of alabaster mixed with water and cement.
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The
foot of the monument appeared to look great. Now, the people stopped
to look in astonishment at him, especially when the alabaster became
solidified and started to yell:
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—
Ouch!"
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Titirică is the hero who proves us that Spiridon Vangheli considers
the child as a complex reality. This explains us the attitude of
readers all over the world. The book „Isprăvile lui Guguță" (Guguță's
Feats) was translated in more than 40 lan-guages. „Steaua lui
Ciubotei" (Ciuboțel's Star) and „Pantalonia-țara năstrușnicilor"
(Pantalonia — the Country of the Cranks) appeared in very many
countries. The last one was recognised in 1989 as the best book of the
year.
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„Pantalonia" is called in the title as „the country of the cranks".
„Pantalonia" appears as a world of strânge people and strânge
adventures under the sigh of extravagance, of prodigy that defies the
trite and the ordinary. The stories about Guguță contain something
near to natural, to real, those about Ciubotei include some
semi-fantastic elements; in „Pantalonia..." the real things interfere
with fan-tastical. The whole universe is childish here: clouds, stars,
sun, birds.
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It is
an anti-gulliverical and anti-hyperbolical vision, the sizes of this
universe are diminished twice: we have here dwarves and their
children; otherwise — people — children and their children. The child
doesn't only correct this world, but also makes up another world. The
whole universe appears here as an immense scene of childhood full of
purity. Love, friendship, life, and death are presented here from
child's point of view. Not the writer is that who relates to the
child, as usually, but the child is that who understands and tells to
the writer, to children, to adults. Here the writer's intuition has
dictated the necessity not only of a personage (as Guguță and
Ciubotei), but of a collective of children (children adults, children
— children). „Pantalonia" is not made up, as the villages „Trei Iezi"
or „Turturica" around an axial personage, but is formed by all the
children-personages who are all axial. It is a story and an universe
with many axis.
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There
is a fright, in all this stories, not to lose childhood's values; its
statute of a real paradise:
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"Cucumber the Great would nudge Cucumber the Small saying: Hey, Wake
up! Wake up and look at the world around ycm as you are going to
become an old mân tonight!"
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The
retort is suggestive and the prose-writer overturns the situation thus
the Childhood to triumph: the shoemaker become doctor treating all
around, a nightin-gale with blunted wings of fly searching its £hicks
was brought home on the wings of its chicks; the two hunters with
their eyes runt their own Pig but they divide it two parts in
accordance with their concord; Bear"s candy the remedy searched by the
Queen is made by the Big Dwarf from ordinary candies hanging them up
on the mill's wings. The dwarves make to win the Good and the Truth
using clever strate-gies. They take under control King's and
lubberly-dwarves' cunning and rashness.
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"Pantalonia" is written with a bright fantasy, with lyricism and is
full of unfore-seeable.
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Spiridon Vangheli dedicated all his life and activity to children. He
is the writer that learnt narrative art for the little one, improving
the short stories, miniature and tales. He translated the famous world
children writers and worked out many schoolbooks.
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The
Honour Andersen Diploma (1974), the state Prise of the Republic
(1980); the State Prise of Soviet Union (1988), the Title of the
People's Writer (1992), and the Prise of Romanian Academy (1996) were
established for our good modern moldavian written for children.
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While
Ciuboțel's locality is the village with star, Spiridon Vangheli is the
mân born under the lucky star of childhood.
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